Monthly Archives: February 2013

Fan­dango jaro­cho is a four-hundred-year-old tra­di­tion from Ver­acruz, Mex­ico born from the encounter between Euro­pean, Indige­nous, African, and Arab cul­tures. After being can­on­ized by the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment, El Nuevo Movimiento Jaranero reclaimed the musi­cal cel­e­bra­tion of fan­dango in the 1970’s as a space for com­mu­nity trans­for­ma­tion and empow­er­ment. Over the last twenty years, Chi­cano and Mex­i­can com­mu­ni­ties in the U.S. have engaged with com­mu­ni­ties in Ver­acruz to use fan­dango as a tech­nol­ogy for com­mu­nity build­ing and social jus­tice that tran­scends national borders.

The Seat­tle Fan­dango Project joins this move­ment by using the fan­dango to build and trans­form com­mu­nity. As a tech­nol­ogy (in the ana­log), fan­dango con­tains pro­to­cols within dance, music, verse, and par­tic­i­pa­tion that pro­vide new chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, con­nec­tion, and under­stand­ing. Peo­ple find them­selves through musi­cal inter­ac­tion with oth­ers, and both indi­vid­u­ally and com­mu­nally real­ize new pos­si­bil­i­ties and ways of being. This is con­viven­cia, to con­vene and coex­ist. Once peo­ple leave fan­dango, this new sense of self car­ries over to other parts of their lives.

Please join the Seat­tle Fan­dango Project and Union Cul­tural Cen­ter in a con­ver­sa­tion about com­mu­nity music as a site of resis­tance and heal­ing. Potluck style This event is free and all ages. Dona­tions grate­fully accepted.

Fea­tur­ing scholar and dancer, Raquel Rivera; Chican@ Artivist@s Martha Gon­za­lez (who is also a doc­toral can­di­date in Fem­i­nist Stud­ies at UW) and Quet­zal Flo­res of the Grammy award win­ning East L.A. band, Quet­zal; and Kali Niño, fan­dan­guera of Toronto and San Andres Tuxt­las and mem­ber of Cafe con Pan.

William Ner­ic­cio
Eng­lish & Com­par­a­tive Lit­er­a­ture, and Chi­cana & Chi­cano Stud­ies San Diego State University

Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 28, 2013
4:00 pm
Com­mu­ni­ca­tions 120

What hap­pens to the mind of a rel­a­tively sane Mex­i­can Amer­i­can aca­d­e­mic when doused with the deri­sive laugh­ter of an East Coast under­grad­u­ate stu­dent? What mad­ness ensues once that self-same “scholar” uses his aca­d­e­mic super­pow­ers to cat­a­logue Mex­i­can stereo­types in the United States? Mex­tasy! Stu­dents and fac­ulty are in for a MEXSTATIC mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion exam­in­ing dom­i­nant trends in the 21st cen­tury rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Lati­nas and Lati­nos in Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture. From Hol­ly­wood to Madi­son Avenue, spe­cific and dam­ag­ing visions of Latina/o sub­jec­tiv­ity have infected the synapses of Amer­i­cans, and Mex­i­cans alike. “Eth­nic man­nequins” (such as William Levy, Eva Lon­go­ria, and Sophia Ver­gara) infect con­scious­ness even as they enter­tain. Nor are they divorced from the talk-radio fueled renais­sance on racial­ized hatred. If Lou Dobbs screams hys­ter­i­cally that Mex­i­cans are “dis­eased” and Rush Lim­baugh encour­ages his lis­ten­ers to tell “Mex­i­cans” to go back to “their coun­try,” what are the effects? Research sug­gests that these col­lec­tive efforts have led to a resur­gence of anti-Latino hate and hate crimes at the very moment that the U.S. becomes more demo­graph­i­cally and decid­edly Latino/a. The pre­sen­ta­tion will fea­ture excerpts from Tex[t]-Mex, Eye­giene, the Tex[t]-Mex Gallery­blog and art from Mextasy.

William Ner­ic­cio is Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish & Com­par­a­tive Lit­er­a­ture and Chi­cana & Chi­cano Stud­ies, and Direc­tor of the Mas­ter of Arts in Lib­eral Arts and Sci­ences pro­gram at San Diego State Uni­ver­sity. He is the author of Tex[t]-Mex: Seduc­tive Hal­lu­ci­na­tions of “Mex­i­cans” in Amer­ica (2007), and edi­tor of The Hurt Busi­ness (2008), and Homer from Sali­nas: John Steinbeck’s Endur­ing Voice for Cal­i­for­nia (2009). Ner­ic­cio blogs at http://textmex.blogspot.com/.

Pre­sented as part of B/ordering Vio­lence: Bound­aries, Gen­der, Indi­gene­ity in the Amer­i­cas, a John E. Sawyer Sem­i­nar in Com­par­a­tive Cul­tures gen­er­ously funded by the Andrew W. Mel­lon Foun­da­tion and co-sponsored by the Latin Amer­i­can & Caribbean Stud­ies pro­gram, the Jack­son School of Inter­na­tional Stud­ies, the Simp­son Cen­ter for the Human­i­ties, and the Insti­tute for the Study of Eth­nic­ity, Race, & Sex­u­al­ity (WISER).

For more on the B/ordering Vio­lence Sem­i­nar Series, visit www.borderingviolence.com.

Where does artis­tic prac­tice and spir­i­tual belief inter­sect with grass­roots activism? This ques­tion will be at the heart of Raquel Z. Rivera’s dis­cus­sion on art and spir­i­tu­al­ity, The Lib­er­a­tion Mytholo­gies: Quests for Roots, Spirit and Jus­tice in Afro-Puerto Rican, Afro-Dominican, and Mex­ica Music and Dance.

Dr. Rivera will look at myth-making through the prisms of eclec­tic North Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties. She will exam­ine how groups try to explain the unex­plain­able, from Afro-Puerto Rican bomba dancers in New York to com­mu­ni­ties of New Mexico-based concheros and Mex­ica dancers. Rivera will con­nect the tra­di­tions these groups honor while explor­ing how they build a bet­ter future.